Sometimes working for RPS means poking through the internet for news, like a dirty gremlin. And sometimes you wake up, see something, raise one eyebrow as high as it’ll go, spit, do a pressup, and post that stuff, because it could not be more news.

Wondrous-looking indie climate change sim Fate of the World has just become available for pre-order. If you missed Kieron’s comprehensive interview with developers Red Redemption, you can, and should, read it here. The pre-order gets you a 50% discount off the price of the game (making it £9.99 + VAT), and from this Monday you’ll have access to the beta, plus you’re ordering the Special Edition, so you’ll get some extra gubbins when the full game is released in Feb 2011. Anything else? YEAH! New trailer after the jump.

maybe Superpowers 3 will be good…..heh, anyway I’m not too interested in this as the topic is sorta meh- I’d be more interested in a mp game of corporations trying to make the most money before the planet dies…but if done well I’ll check out a demo or something.

What are you talking about? Quintin doesn’t even offer any opinions here except to say that it looks wondrous. Which, as climate sim games go, is true. He’s not recommending it or otherwise. Simply reporting the news.

You need to learn to distinguish critical opinion from simple reportage.

A trailer after the jump, huh? Right. I bet that’s exactly what I’ll find after the “jump”.

Also, Quintin is really just a British version of Quentin, which comes in the Tarantino variety. Tarantino directed Inglorious Bastards and I’m told Gillen hated that movie. This can only mean that Quinns has assassinated Teh Gillenz0r in order to spam us with empty promises of trailers and jumps to nowhere.

I’d been refreshing the Red Redemption site often enough of late for it to pop into Chrome’s “most visited sites” thingy. Pleasantly surprised by the price, the pre-order bonuses are just the icing on the cake. Can’t wait to check out the beta. xD

The free BBC Climate Challenge game is still around and isn’t a terrible way to spend an hour or so for those interested in exploring a very stripped-down version of the game concept prior to parting with their cash.

P.S. In my expert opinion, the Space Program is a waste of time. Or, more importantly, money.

Oh dear, now you’ve gone and said something I can’t abide and I have to be an angry Internet man because I have no self-control when people question the validity of space programmes.

Without space exploration we wouldn’t have half the inventions of the modern world. Space improves life on Earth. The computer you’re using to read this exists thanks to NASA. Kidney dialysis? NASA. CAT scanner? NASA. Cordless power tools? NASA. Athletic footwear? Modern stuff is all based partly on NASA’s inventions. I know that’s more mundane but I’m just trying to show how ubiquitous it is. If Tesla invented the first half of the twentieth century, NASA invented the second. The urgent pressures of space exploration, and ultimately space colonization, demand extraordinary advances which can be applied to us on Earth. Imagine what useful things could come out of a mission to Mars or a lunar base! And yes, the money could be spent on Earth instead, but the only two things which have historically increased standard of living are more wealth – which space could give us in unmatched levels, both through inventions and raw materials – and new political philosophies and ideas. And given how tiny space budgets are when compared to, well, any other budget you can think of I don’t think it’s particularly fair to charge it with being a waste; there are enormous sums of money spent on things that are of much more debatable need than space.

I was really looking forward to this, but after following the vague updates and seeing this trailer I’m slightly concerned that they may have put too much effort into getting the underlying science and message across at the expense of game design. I got bored of the BBC climate challenge game very quickly as it devolved into nothing more than sliding meters, and it looks like this might be more of the same.

The ‘problem’ with Climate Challenge was that, so far as I could tell at least, there was no interaction between policies (beyond those directly associated via prereqs) or between policies and events. This meant that the game felt like an endless series of disjointed decisions rather than forming an overall narrative.

Needless to say, addressing this problem is undoubtedly one of the first uses to which the greatly increased time/resources available to the devs for Fate of the World would’ve been put.

I was just thinking about this last night and wondering what had become of that climate change game I saw on RPS but could not remember the name of.

I’m pretty sure I will be preordering this if I get beta access from Monday. I am hopeful that they have included as deep a model as they promise and that this, in turn, means I can be a megalomaniacal lunatic. References to a “Dr. Apocalypse” reaffirm this hope.

While the climate change bandwagon seems to get so many people excited, the fact they’re trying to flog the idea for sales here works against them for me. I’d give this a fair go if it wasn’t for the social propaganda crap I’d be wading through every step of the way.